Thanks to Karen, a friend from the Cabot Street in Beverly (MASS) house where I stayed last year, was kind enough to invite both Anne and myself to stay with her and her family for a few days in their house, in Cornish, New Hampshire.

The house was constructed by her family and built out of wood from trees they owned. Now while that may not be the most exciting fact in the world, I thought it was pretty amazing that people built there own houses. I am used to the more conventional approach of looking through real estate agencies for property that is already built!

While in New Hampshire Karen took me on a whirl wind tour of her home town. We drove into Vermont on what was a very wet and miserable day, but even that didn't seem to detract from the overwhelming color and vastness of the little I saw of the state. We visited Anne's friend Ben, who lived in the most wooden place I think I have ever stepped foot in. Ben described it as "like living in a tree", and while I tried to take it all in, Anne herded the pet ducks!

The craziest point of the trip came when Karen's father discovered I had never shot a gun. It was past eleven o'clock at night, but he insisted we take some guns outside into the darkness of their garden and shoot blindly into the darkness! The first was a standard rifle, the next a huge 12 gauge shotgun! Both gave considerable kicks from the massively loud blasts that left me laughing in disbelief and I think, nervousness!

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